QUALITY AND MASS CONSUMPTION GOODS IN LATE SOVIET SOCIETY

Abstract

The paper analyzes the content and meaning of the concept of “quality” in the late USSR at the level of political discourse and among scientists. Based on selected cases of the history of Soviet materiality – personal respiratory protection equipment, foodstuffs and clothing – the peculiarities of the definition of quality as an economic, scientific, technological and cultural category are examined. After the Great Patriotic War, quality was an important category in Soviet industrial production and the scientific and industrial sector. In industrial and political discourse, quality acted as an important category of modernity, generally denoting modern society. It meant the increased importance for the state of the quality of life and the categories of life safety and working conditions of the Soviet person and was at the center of the rhetoric about the material basis of communism. Science and the notions of the wide possibilities of scientific tools in the production of wholesome foodstuffs and comfortable and high-quality clothing played an important role in the evolution of the notion of “quality” in the late Soviet period. In addition, in the last decades of the Soviet era, quality was also associated with the notion of safety in a broad sense. It meant the possibility of producing and consuming goods and food products that are safe for consumption. The article also shows the significance of Soviet quality in contemporary Russia in the context of the phenomenon of nostalgia for the Soviet. This study thus allows the author to contribute to the study of the history of Soviet everyday life, material history, as well as the history of economic development of the USSR.